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Starts off with a bit of fighting filler between Deidara and Gaara. Well fighting isn't really a good word to describe it, Gaara just chases Deidara around the village with his sand before he eventually jumps up onto the sand and flies off like in the manga.

Then some more filler with Kankurou looking for Gaara, a bit of a moodsetter with some sand ninjas standing looking up at their kazekage. Then just as the real fight is about to begin we jump back to watching some more bell test filler (sigh). If I was Jiraiya or Tsunade I'd have gone home already. (Well I probably wouldn't have shown up at all if I had been true to the manga. )

Wow, we're at the commercial break already and we've seen like three pages of manga material.

Back from the commercial, and back at the sand again, for some manga material. Deidara can only send off a few clay birds analyzing Gaara before being interupted by the bell test again. It's funny, the anime team is really outdoing themselves, creating flashbacks of filler in this very episode. I don't think I've seen that before. After that we're finally back to some manga material in the bell test, as Naruto and Sakura discuss Kakashi's weak point.

Then it's back to the sand again, for some quick fighting, before the bell test resolves (finally). Kakashi's weak point is of course... well it's one of the few highlights of the episode so if you don't know I'll let you find out for yourself.

We're back at the sand again where Deidara is about to get crushed by a giant hand of sand. Episode ends.

Fillers aside, I didn't really like how the Gaara vs Deidara fight was animated. It didn't have any cool music at all and it was really slow compared to the manga (the fillers didn't help).

I'm getting a little pessimistic now as it looks like the fillers might never end.

oh boy, maybe I should ot waited to watch it before I came here. having already read the Manga, I'm excited about the anime because watching moving footage, is better than looking at still pages.
so from that stand point I'm enjoying the anime again for the first time in nearly 18 months.
however, if they keep on putting in filler/cutbacks, it will drag out every damn fight in the series, making it just another Dragonball Z....if there's one thing I enjoy about Bleach, there not stringing it out, its very faithful to the Manga.
I just hope Naruto keeps up the pace with Bleach.

i agree 100% if it is going to take forever for a fight to happen and end i am going to be very dissapointed. whats going to happen when they hit the major fights like in chapters 335-342. that sounds liek it could take at least 10 episodes hahaha. hopefuly it wont tho.

Shippuuden 04: This is a better episode from last week's. The transition is much better done than last week's awkaward jumping around from one scene to another. In the episode, a character will prepare the audience that the scene is about to change between Gaara vs. Deidara and the bell test. The music, is once again, the better part about this episode. Animation is so-so. It gets a 7.3 from me which I'll round it up to a 7.

Spoiler for my complains and whining:

- Well, the bell test has ended, but boy was it anti-climactic. After several try to outdone Kakashi fails in various manner since Kakashi is simply too awesome. Those handseals are ridiculously fast. Right, right.. I'm complaining here. So.. Naruto and Sakura are sitting under a tree. k-i-s-s-i- ... wrong wrong.. they are admiring Kakashi-sensei and his awesome combination of strength, intelligence, agility don't leave him with any weakness. How does one defeat someone like him? Sakura insists that Kakashi-sensei must have at least one weakness. Naruto looks at the friendly wise-owl and suddenly comes up with what exactly could be Kakashi's weakness. They go to confront Kakashi. Kakashi sees them coming and gets ready to face off a couple of naive teenagers who think they can take him on head on. Naruto suddenly yells, "the last line/sentence from Icha Icha Tactics is......" Then, things happen in sequence as follows,,

sequence 1

sequence 2

sequence 3:
By "seeing", he means he can lip-read Naruto's said words.

sequence 4:

When he opens his eyes, the bells are already taken. It was amusing in a way, but for a formidable ninja such as Kakashi, I didn't expect him to fall for such tactics.

- The animation isn't as good as I would have liked. In one scence, Gaara jumps onto his sand-cloud, and we could see how badly this scene was animated when his feet touches the sand.

- There are still more of those pointless recaps of things from within the episode. i.e. Gaara jumping up on the sand-cloud thingie after the commercial break to remind everyone he jumped up on it just in case we have already forgotten. Kakashi's handseal speed, etc..

- Chasing-Deidara wasn't that much fun either. It's almost like looking at loop of frames that goes over and over. He comes near Gaara's gigantic Shukaku-arm and evades them. How many times does it need to be shown before we get the point, yes, Deidara's magical bird is fast. Btw, Gaara confronts Deidara in the first place because of the bird. Apparently, there is no such birds in the desert.

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Eat and sleep!Sig by RRW.Nanatsu no Taizai! Why haven't you watched it?Executive member of the ASS. Ready to flee at the first sign of trouble.

Wow, we're at the commercial break already and we've seen like three pages of manga material.

And, once upon a time, actually not long ago, anyways, there were claims of 3 chapter per episode.

If they continue to slow down the action scenes this way, by adding unnecessary, lack of imagination, stuff in between, it will become highly disappointing later on. If that is the case, I expect, lots of Konohamaru "action" scenes, to evaporate the intense feeling of the moment.

When he opens his eyes, the bells are already taken. It was amusing in a way, but for a formidable ninja such as Kakashi, I didn't expect him to fall for such tactics.

Spoiler:

To tell you the truth, when I saw this part, this one didn’t bother me, because Kakashi falling for this trick was made more as a Comic relief, rather than any other thing. And I think in the first Episode of Shipuden a lot of emphasis was made on Kakashi love for this book, I guess it was so the viewer can understand why Kakashi was like that.

But I think at last it showed a little of Naruto using more his brains and analyzing things before going to action.

I just don’t see Kakshi falling for this trick while been seriousa and besides the only persons who should now about the spoiler, are friends

OFF-TOPIC:

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY My 3000th Post in Animesuki, so Happy I have endured so long here

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"when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." -

That was a decent episode. The music was ok during the Gaara VS Deidera but they could of made it a bit cooler like some music from the old Naruto series in the fight Sarutobi vs Orochimaru when he summoned Enma.

I hope the next episode has more on Gaara and less on this stupid bell test or even filler, I am tired of watching a fight, builds suspense then they change the scene.

I enjoyed the episode, the music that we heard was ntoably good and I'm really enjoying the new soundtrack.

Some flaws though:
- The Bell Test and the Gaara/Deidara fight just don't mix. You have an epic battle between the Kazekage and an Akatsuki member and then you flash to a minor fight, it just doesn't gel too well. Everytime the Bell test showed up I was pretty much waiting for it to end, not because I thought it was bad but because I wanted to see what was happening between Gaara and Deidara.
- As ShikaShika touched upon, the Gaara and Deidara fight lacked music (at least any that I noticed). It was still a good watch and without music gave it a 'real' feel but for an epic fight like that some music probably should've been involved, especially considering how good the soudntrack has been so far for the Shippuden.
- Even though it was in the manga the way Naruto and Sakura beat Kakashi just felt weak to me personally, although I'm sure that plenty share a different opinion to me on that.

Over-all though I liked the episode, it had me very firmly glued to the screen and has me excited to see how the other ends up (I'm not a manga reader so it's still unknwon to me ). I gave it an 8 although maybe that's a little higher than it deserves now that I look properly at what I percieved to be the flaws.

I hear you, but as you've probably understood already, that was supposed to be a comical ending to a (sort of) comical fight. If I'm not completely mistaken the manga cuts straight to the ending of the fight right after we see Sakura's newly aquired strength (yes the first time). If the anime had followed the manga it would have been over in less than half an episode. The anime added so much filler that the ending now seems like a ripoff. I can understand if people go "we sat through two whole episodes for that?"

I think Naruto will forever etch itself into my mind as the "what could have been" anime. I haven't seen any other anime (and I've seen quite a few) that's momentarily awsome but average at best the rest of the time. (And I'm not even taking the filler arcs into consideration.) The awsome points are, excuse me for being subjective, all from when they follow the manga by the panel. I was very pleased to hear about the extremely long filler arcs, because I thought it meant they were gonna keep their hands off the manga material for once. I was obviously wrong...

Neh I thought the sand chasing Deidara Sunagakure was quite cool, it built up the battle quite nicely. I always thought Gaara brought out the big guns too quickly in the manga with his giant sand hand.

But in the anime, the forming of the giant hand didn't have the awesome effect it was supposed to project... The whole scene of the sand coming up looked like it was copy and pasted in more than anything.

And I think I would have preferred slower hand seals, I still remember trying to follow Zabuza and Kakashi when they both did the handseals for Suiyurdan That was what got me hooked on Naruto in the first place =p

Last of all, I totally agree with Shika Shika, I hate the feeling whenever I get when I watch Naruto - the feeling you get when you think that the episode would have been so much better if you did it yourself or if the producers added in or refined that particular scene.

This was an OK episode. It's nice to see new examples of what a fight between ninja can be like.
Deidara's fighting style is pretty lame, though...are those sculpture bombs all he can do? And what are those mouths, anyway? bloodline limit? no way, a whole clan of those mouth-sculpturers would be just corny. forbidden technique? maybe...actually, i think it's some monster sealed within him. akatsuki seems to have a thing with those anyway.

Ok, just saw the episode, and man that was sloooow... I really hope the pace picks up a bit in the next episodes. Gaara vs Deidara totally failed to keep me interested, too much staring contest, Gaara looked dumb controlling the sand, pointless and uninteresting flying around...

And they could have been more creative with the filler added to the bell test, I mean it was basically... Kakashi uses random jutsu, and Naruto/Sakura get hit/evade it. They could have made them counterattack or something.

Seems like Shippuden is going downhill after that awesome first episode... hopefully things will more... exciting, in the next episode. Please don't add another 3 pointless minutes of Deidara flying around the Sand. >_>

How ridiculous it was, the manga looked so much better and cooler...and of course Gaara brings out his big guns right away in the manga, we're talking about Akatsuki here!

The ending of it...I don't understand why they don't end it where the manga ended it, that was a better ending for this 'chapter'. Not to mention the ending looked completely cheesy...oh maybe I know why, because the actual ending will actually be stretched out to 10 minutes maybe?

BAH!

The animation quality at the end was bad too...

And also, no Naruto until 3/15? Or am I wrong...

Another thing was, how lame was Kakashi? He can blow fire right through his mask.........OOOOOOOOOKKKKKKKKKAYYYYYYYYY

The manga had Naruto and Sakura a lot smarter (well they all got to the point).

And I'm not sure about the fire thing...I can't remember if all these fillers will actually ruin the story in the end......

But as of now, I am not watching the series until there is a good episode (I'm talking rated mostly 10s here). The rating has been quite honest surprisingly, though I still think the first two episodes should've been lower...